“Keep running!” I shouted, and the woman sprinted away from me.
She reached the spot on the side of the ravine and leaned out over the side. There were marks on the dirt here, and it looked like the area had been smoothed over by machines, but there was no other trace that this had ever been a spot where the miners worked.
“Down here!” She pointed. “I don’t see a way down.”
I neared the edge and heard another round of gunshots behind us. These missed us, but I could feel the air the angry bullets parted. We didn’t have much time. We never had enough time.
The first platform of the scaffolding was a good five meters down, and I didn’t see any ladder that would let us descend safely.
“Oh, no!” Z gasped as I reached for her. She actually tried to wiggle out of my grasp, but I was still quicker, and I swung her into my arms like she was a baby.
Then I jumped.
“Nooooo!” she shouted for the second it took us to land on the platform.
If I had been in my half-tiger form, I could have fallen three, maybe four times the distance while holding Z and only suffered a minor injury. Even in my human form, this wouldn’t have been a big deal if I was at optimal health. But I felt like shit, needed to sleep, and still wasn’t fully healed from getting bounced around the bridge of the carrier. I hit the platform like a sack of bricks; my legs gave out, my back smashed into the platform with an agonizing crack, and my breath exploded from my lungs as if someone had smacked me in the stomach with a sledgehammer.
Z had also taken some of the impact, and while I didn’t feel any of her bones break, I did hear her lungs empty of air when she fell on top of my chest.
I was dizzy, and I figured that this was a good place to sleep for now. Z would figure out the rest. She was smart. I just wanted to close my eyes for a few minutes. I almost didn’t care if the Alloprize soldiers caught us. I didn’t care if they killed me. I was just so damn tired. I wanted to rest. Forever.
“Adam, get up!” I heard Z shout, but she sounded so far away. I felt her tug on my arm like she had done on the bridge of the carrier, but I didn’t care anymore.
I am almost there. Please stay awake, my Adam.
Eve’s voice came into my brain like an electrical spark, and I felt my spine shake with a startling shock. The sensation forced my eyes open, and I rolled over on the platform toward Z’s pull.
“Yeah! There’s a cave right here! Hurry!” Z shouted, and I managed to get my legs vertical and my ass off the ground.
The blonde hacker pulled me into the mouth of the dark cave only a second and a half before a spray of gunfire lit up the platform behind us.
“Get down,” I grunted as I twisted around to face the exit. My hand reached for the shotgun strapped around my shoulders, and my thumb flipped off the safety with a practiced move. As I expected, a pair of grenades dropped from the edge above and bounced off the platform. My shotgun kicked back in my hands, and the slug sent one of the grenades skipping away. My second shot nicked the side of the other grenade, and the energy sent it spinning like a top instead of flying away from us.
Z was already moving back into the cave, and I turned to sprint behind her. I’d been ready to sleep only a few moments before, but there was nothing like a live grenade to force one’s sphincter to motivate the fucking legs.
The explosion went off behind me and sprayed shards of shrapnel into the cave. I felt some of them bounce off the backplate of my armor, but there was a hot sting in the back of my right thigh, and I stumbled into Z. We both fell over again, and the blonde woman grunted when I landed on top of her.
“I’m hit,” I growled as I pushed myself off her.
“Where?”
“Leg. Help me get up,” I said as I tried to stand. There was probably a seam in the armor plates that the piece of grenade had slipped through.
“I am approaching your location. I am engaging laser arrays,” Eve said over our transponders.
“Kick their asses, Eve!” Z shouted as she crouched next to my leg. We were standing about ten meters inside of the cave, but there wasn’t much light coming through, so I turned on the glow of my armor.
“Whoa! How did you--”
“Left button on the left sleeve,” I said, and her suit lights turned on a second later.
Then the rocky ceiling of the cave started to shake, and I heard screaming up above.
“Eve, we are somewhat close to the surface. Be careful with your shot placements or the cave we are hiding in might collapse,” I said into my transponder.
“Understood,” she said. “They have some missile launchers. I did a pass and took out half of their vehicles, but Persephone has told me that they are attempting to lock the weapons on her.”
“We are good in here for a bit, get away, and we’ll continue to dig into the cave,” I replied as I looked into the depths of the cavern. It seemed to swallow the light from my suit like a black hole.
“Uhhh. I don’t really want to go--” Z started to say, but another pair of grenades bounced onto the platform near us.
Then we ran into the depths of the cave.
The passage looked as if it might have once been a mine. Gashes in the wall indicated that some sort of machine could have once traversed the path, but some of the placements of the cuts didn’t make sense, and the ground was rougher than I would have expected for a mining operation. I was either wrong, and something else had cut across the walls, or the mining operation had been abandoned over half a century ago, and the natural earthquakes of the moon covered most of the traces of man’s passage.
I was hoping it was the latter.
It had been three thousand years since humankind first left Earth. In the beginning, most ships left with the most meager of hyperdrive and terraforming technologies. Those early settlers had been hard men and women that faced the unknown with steadfast hope. Thousands of people left Earth every day on “ARK” ships set to go as far as they could from our home world.
Most of them were never heard from again.
It didn’t mean they weren’t successful. The ancient issue with communication was still a problem today; there was no efficient way to get news out of a solar system. It was hand delivered by trade ships, explorers, corporate, or military fleets that set out into the universe in search of rhodium or other precious metals to power hyper or warpdrives. It really was a rehash of the old western expansion of ancient America during the 1800s.
And there were “Indians” in this great frontier.
I hadn’t heard of intelligent alien life, but there were rumors of strange beasts on other planets. I had never seen one myself so they could have been tales told just to pass the time, but the scratches on the cave wall here could have been organic, and it was possible that something lived deep under the surface of this moon before terra-forming happened.
I didn’t bring up my concerns to Z, but the thought was enough to take a bit of the edge off of my exhaustion. It was starting to hit me again, and I almost didn’t care about whatever could have lived in this cave. I just wanted to sleep. I needed to sleep. If not for the desire to protect my friend, I would have just curled up against a rock and drifted off into the nothingness.
But my friend needed me. If I slept now, Z would be in trouble, so I forced my eyelids up and stumbled forward on my injured leg. We only need to survive a few more minutes.
The grenades went off behind us, and the explosions echoed through the depths of the cave like an elephant’s trumpet. I hoped that, if there was something living in the depths, it took the blasts as a warning and moved away from us.
Of course, the opposite could also happen.
“How far we gonna go?” Z said after we had moved a few dozen meters into the darkness.
“Hold on,” I said, and the woman paused.
I inhaled deeply and then tilted my head around in a circle.
“Please tell me you don’t smell a giant hacker eating alien,” Z said.
&nb
sp; “They aren’t aliens if they are natives of the moon, and no, I don’t smell anything. I do hear voices coming from the entrance. They are pursuing us,” I said with a sigh.
“Fucking shit. What is it with these guys?”
“We did just destroy their entire space fleet.” I shrugged.
“Fair enough. I’d be pissed too. They are stuck on this moon, huh? Seems like they would want to capture us and ransom for passage on Persephone.”
“Yeah. They are stuck here,” I said as I turned over the hacker’s words in my head. She made a really good point that I hadn’t considered until this moment: Alloprize was pretty much defeated. We just needed to find Jatal and get him and his men reunited with his people in the caves. The Children of Rah could outlast the Alloprize military with our help. It would only take a few weeks, maybe a few months for the invaders to surrender.
“Turn off your lights,” I whispered to Z as the footsteps grew closer to us. Even in my human form, my ears were much improved over a normal man’s, and I guessed there were five soldiers coming toward us.
“Uhhh. I don’t think that is a good idea. This cave is giving me the heebie-jeebies. It looks like one of those places in the horror movies where the sex- crazed teenagers want to--”
“Shut up, turn off your damn lights, and cut your transponder off,” I hissed at her, and both of our lights shut off.
I lifted my shotgun to point toward the sounds of the Alloprize soldiers, but the weapon felt like it weighed eighty kilos. I had to use both of my arms to lift it, and the sudden darkness of the cave made me wonder if I was sleeping or awake. Damn it, I really wanted to sleep.
Was I sleeping? Had I drifted off as soon as Z and I turned off our lights? I heard my friend breathing next to me, but maybe that was my own breath. Maybe I was dreaming. Maybe I was spinning through a dream, and I was still stuck in the cell of the laboratory where they experimented on me. Or maybe I was in my bunk back when I was in Jupiter’s Marine Corps.
Maybe I was back with my mom and sister, and I was trying to get a job to help pay the medical bills. Maybe I’d just dreamed that I’d gone to war. That I had joined the Yakuza, been sold into slavery, and been changed into a weretiger monster.
Maybe I had just dreamed of Eve.
She was like something out of my dreams.
“I thought I saw a light up ahead,” I heard a distant voice whisper, and I let out a slow sigh of relief.
“Shhh,” another voice hissed.
The cave shook around us, and I wondered if Eve had made another pass overhead. She was probably trying to message us, but her voice through the transponders would give away our location.
“Turn off your lights and set your helmets to infrared,” another voice said.
Fuck. Of course, they had infrared helmets. It was standard equipment for most military forces. I didn’t need it when I was in my tiger form, but I couldn’t change back now. It was taking everything I had to keep my eyes open.
I debated our options. The five soldiers would be able to see us before we could spot them. So we could either turn on our lights and engage in a gunfight, or we could turn on our lights and then try to move back further into the cave. Unless there was another exit out of the cave somewhere, we were going to have to fight them eventually, and every minute that passed made me want to sleep more.
“Step back a bit. I’m going to try and engage them,” I whispered to Z, but it was really hard to move my mouth. It felt like my jaw and tongue were numb.
“You sure?” she asked. “You can’t even walk.” I understood she wanted to help me, but she was smart enough to know that she couldn’t go up against a group of trained soldiers.
“Fall back,” I whispered again, and I heard her move away from me.
I had been crouched beside one of the cave walls, and I tried to stand. My leg should have healed by now, but it hadn’t, and the limb protested my movement. Agony ripped through the lower half of my body, and I just couldn’t stand. I thought the pain would have woken me up, but it only made me want to sleep more.
Fuck. This was it. Even if I managed to get up, I doubted I’d be able to control my shotgun enough to aim. I contemplated changing the plans and fleeing farther into the cave, but my condition would only worsen. We were trapped now, and the hopelessness made me want to scream.
Except I was just too damn tired. It felt like someone else was controlling my body, and I was like an observer that could only belt out silent screams.
“Help me stand,” I whispered to Z, and the woman’s arms wrapped around my left arm.
“Let’s just keep going,” her mouth was against my ear, and her whisper was desperate.
“I can’t really walk. I’ll try to hold them off while you fall back.” I reached down to my belt to grab a grenade, but I had either forgotten to equip them when I put my belt on, or they had fallen off when the walls of the carrier bridge chewed on me.
“Adam, I don’t--”
“Go, damn it.”
“No, damn it,” she hissed. “I didn’t leave you in the carrier. I’m not leaving you now.”
“You’ll die.”
“I’ll probably die after they kill you. I don’t care anymore.”
“Fine,” I said, and Z’s words gave me enough strength to raise my shotgun.
“Adam, I want to tell you something.” She still had her arms around my left bicep, and I felt her hot breath on my ear.
“I know,” I said.
“I know you know. I still want to say it before we die.”
“Target acquired!” a voice shouted half a second before the cave lit up with the first explosions of bullets.
I tried to throw my left arm back to push Z away, but I didn’t have enough strength. The woman was bringing her own rifle up, and the cave was filled with the sound of bullets leaving their weapons. I yanked on the trigger of my shotgun, but the slug didn’t go anywhere close to the eruptions of fire that hinted at the Alloprize soldier’s locations.
A bullet hit me in the chest. It didn’t penetrate my new armor, but it knocked me away from Z and into the wall of the cave. My friend shouted when I spun away from her, but she didn’t stop firing at the other five men.
I tried to raise my shotgun back up to point across the cave, but my arm just wouldn’t move, and another bullet punched me in the stomach. The armor still held against the round, but it felt like someone had stomped me on the abs, and the air left my lungs.
I bounced off the wall and fell to my knees. Despite my best efforts, the shotgun fell out of my grip and swung from the strap across my chest. I fumbled a grab for it and then tried to reach behind my back to get my rifle. That was an even more futile gesture.
Screams filled the cave, and I turned my eyes toward the five men. Two were covered in a red fire, and the light from the flames showed the other three men spinning around to point their rifles in all directions.
Eve materialized out of the darkness behind them.
Her eyes burned like the fire flowing over the two screaming men, and her mouth was opened in a silent scream that showed her fangs. The men turned their weapons to face her, and I tried to shout out a warning.
The vampire didn’t need my warning. Her left hand flicked out and raked across the neck of the man closest to her. A wave of blood emerged from his throat, and he let out a surprised choke. His rifle began to spray bullets, but Eve held out her right hand, and the weapon turned to point at the second man. The stream of metal ripped through the armor of the man as he screamed.
The third man aimed his rifle at the dark woman, but Eve seemed to fade from existence, and his bullets just bounced off the wall behind her. She materialized behind him, reached up her hands to yank his helmet back, and then bit him in the neck. The man’s eyes went wide, and he let go of his rifle so that he could try to push her away from his throat. His hands stopped their movement about halfway there, and they fell slack to his side.
Then he screamed as if his fle
sh was boiling, and the sound joined the voices of the men who were covered with the magical red fire.
The screams seemed to go on for half a minute. The two burning men were too busy trying to put out the fire that covered their bodies to help their friend, and his skin began to turn an ash color. Then Eve let go of him, and he tumbled to the ground as if he’d been turned into a rigid statue.
The burning soldiers were still trying to put out the fires by rolling on the ground, but it was as if they were covered with napalm, and their movements only seemed to enhance the flames and their agony. Eve pulled her pistol from the holster on her belt, pointed the weapon, and pulled the trigger twice. Each shot went through the neck of one of the men, and the fire around their bodies faded as soon as they died.
Then we were in darkness. Except for the light coming from Eve’s red eyes.
The vampire walked toward us, and she pressed the button on her sleeve to turn on the lights of her suit. Eve hadn’t bothered to put on any armor, and her perfect body was outlined with the light blue glow. She put away her pistol and let out a long exhale when she reached us.
“What took you so long?” Z asked with a dry laugh.
Chapter 15
It took both women to carry me out of the cave. My legs refused to work, and I lacked the strength to hold my head up. I heard Jatal’s voice when we reached the platform, and I heard both Eve and Z shout up at him, but I couldn’t understand what they said until I felt them tie a rope around my chest.
Then I finally fell asleep.
And I dreamed.
I walked through a massive warehouse filled with cages. They were all empty, but I could smell the scent of the cats that used to live in them. I could see the fur they had shed, and I tasted their terror on the air. This was a prison, but where were the prisoners?
I walked toward the nearest cell, but my movements were alien. I looked down at my legs and saw that I wasn’t a human, and I was walking on all fours. My arms were legs, and I had a tail. I was a tiger, but my mind was my own, and I felt none of the anger the animal normally brought to my soul.
Space Witch: A Paranormal Space Opera Adventure (Star Justice Book 2) Page 14
